“Dreams of Other Worlds”: The Mars Rovers #WSW2013

All week long for World Space Week, we will be posting exclusive excerpts from Chris Impey and Holly Henry’s new book, Dreams of Other Worlds: The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration. Each day will include an excerpt from a different chapter about a different unmanned spacecraft, along with a picture of the craft that doubles as an iPhone background!

Today’s excerpt is from Chapter 3, and it talks about our strategy for learning more about Mars, and what the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are doing to help us with that.

Tomorrow will bring another chapter and another adventure, so stay tuned!

Decoding the Red Planet

As we saw in the last chapter, Mars seems dead to the orbiters that daily send back images of the surface. The atmosphere is tenuous, ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays scorch the soil, and it rarely gets above freezing even on the balmiest summer day.15 It’s unlikely any form of life could exist on the surface now, but Mars has not always been so inhospitable. NASA’s strategy in searching for life in the Solar System is to “follow the water,” and even if there’s no surface water now, there was in the past. Each of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, was designed for just a ninety-day mission. In the end, they have vastly exceeded expectations with their indomitable traverses of the forbidding Martian terrain. Think of them as twin robotic field geologists whose primary goal is to search for the signposts of water.16 The record of past water can be found in the rocks, minerals, and landforms on Mars, particularly those that could only have formed in the presence
of water.

Think you know all about these missions? Take our quiz and find out!
Proud of your score? Tweet it! #WSW2013

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